WTF-Beta

President Donald Trump expressed frustration in recent days about the long wait for a pair of Boeing
747s that will serve as the new Air Force One planes.

The jets are years behind schedule. Trump negotiated the $4 billion contract for the aircraft during his first term, and it isn’t clear whether they’ll be ready during his current one. Cost overruns have totaled more than $2 billion to date.

Trump advisor Elon Musk is working with Boeing in hopes of delivering the aircraft faster, the manufacturer’s chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, reiterated on Thursday.

“The president’s clearly not happy with the delivery timing. I think he’s made that well known,” Ortberg said at a Barclays industrials conference. “Elon Musk is actually helping us a lot in working through the requirements ... to help us get the things that are non-value-added constraints out of the way so that we can move faster and get the president those airplanes delivered.”

Ortberg called Musk, CEO of SpaceX, which competes with Boeing’s defense and space unit, a “brilliant guy” who can “pretty quickly ascertain the difference between technical requirement and things that we can move out of the way.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/20/trump-boeing-air-force-one-delays.html

Imagine

Hmmm.

Don’t doubt they’re experiencing it, doubt it’s related to the vax.

An AI flop. Bigly.

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/humane-ai-shuts-down-flop-20175974.php

How do you know Zelenskyy isn't a dictator?
Trump doesn't suck up to him.

-- Rep. Eric Swalwell

I keep telling YouTube I am "not interested" in YouTube Shorts (TikTok-like short videos) and they keep showing up anyway.

Sigh.

Watching the Mump trying to purge words like LGBTQ+ from previously published research reminded me of how important it is to have hard copies, paper versions of publications. Yes, you can try to brun books, but first you have to go out and round them up. Much more difficult than digital scrubbing...

This new Kindle rule is more proof of the importance of physical copies.

I love the Czechs. Have been to Prague twice. Little old ladies would take my hand and take me to the spot to catch the trolley. They told me I looked like Vaclav Havel, their popular president, so they liked me. With one exception they were great.

@wtg said in Another federal prosecutor resigns:

A longtime federal prosecutor resigned Tuesday rather than carry out what she described as orders from Trump-appointed officials to take actions unsupported by evidence

As this starts to happen more, it's really starting to make me worry.... wouldn't it be better to have these people of principle stay in their roles?

Could they stay in their roles, but not comply? Like, workplace civil disobedience??

Not around here. Lots of construction.

it's all just so wrong.

I use it, but in tandem with Goodreads. So many of my friends are on Goodreads and I stalk a couple folks whose reading preferences match mine to get suggestions. I do like Storygraph’s review mechanism as the pacing and mood parts really help me to determine whether I might like a book.

@Rontuner For starters, Musk and the gang getting access to everyone's personal information and access to all the government's computers means, in this day and age, they control everything. Why do words like blackmail and sabotage come to mind? Brought to us by our very own royal couple: Trump and Musk.

I called Gaviscon Canada today. I try to limit sodium and wanted to have a better idea of how much I might be taking in while I'm taking the Canadian Gaviscon. I knew there was some sodium carbonate in the tablets but the amount wasn't listed on the label, so I couldn't calculate an approximate sodium content.

Final answer:

Regular strength: 22.6 mg sodium per tablet
Extra strength: 29.95 mg
Max Relief: 34 mg

I can live with those numbers with the number of tablets I'm using daily.

I asked why the alginate products aren't available in the US. He said that the US Gaviscon is made by a company called Haleon, and that the Canadian Gaviscon is produced by a completely separate company that is only licensed to sell and market in Canada.

I had looked at the various Gaviscon products that show up on various sites. They all have different formulas. Some have aluminum or magnesium, some have potassium carbonate instead of sodium carbonate, and I saw different sweeteners, too. Sugar, aspartame, and saccharin.

With these GI and ENT docs developing their own alginate product lines, I wonder how long it will take Haleon to launch one here. Clearly there seems to be a market developing for it. The US Gaviscon does list alginic acid as an inactive ingredient in their product but from the anecdotal stories I've heard, people haven't had as good results with the US product because there isn't enough of it to form a good raft. Plus the US product has magnesium and aluminum and people often try to avoid aluminum.

Your useless facts for the day!